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Introduction
According to the Jewish story, God cast the dragon Leviathan into the sea; so, according to Snorri's Edda, the All-Father cast the Mithgarthsorm into the sea.
Leviathan was sometimes conceived in the Middle Ages as identical with the evil serpent, the prince of all evil, the devil. In the same way, the Mithgarthsorm was thought of as a form in which the devil appeared. This conception does not occur for the first time in translations of legends, like the Heilagra Manna Sögur (II, 4; cf. 10, 20); it is found as early as the tale of the death of Ívar Víðfaðmi. (60) Ívar is thus addressed: 'Thou art, I believe, the worst serpent there is, the one that is called Mithgarthsorm.' And, directly after, he is called þrúðni þursinn, 'mighty monster.' Here the expression, 'thou art the Mithgarthsorm,' is practically equivalent to 'thou art the devil himself.'
In the Middle Ages there was a widespread, oft-recurring conception, allegorical in nature, that Leviathan, i.e. the devil, swallowed the bait of Christ's mortal nature, and was caught on the hook of Christ's divinity. (61) This conception we also find in Iceland in Christian times, e.g. in the poem Lilja, from the middle of the fourteenth century, and in the Homiliubók, edited by Wisén (p. 75f). It is this same conception to which the story of Thor's fishing expedition points back: Thor makes ready a stout line, baits the hook with the head of an ox, and casts his line into the sea, where it sinks to the bottom. The Mithgarthsorm swallows the bait. The hook sticks fast in its mouth. Thor draws the serpent up, but it quickly sinks back into the sea. (62)
The story of Thor's fishing expedition was represented in sculpture in the early Middle Ages in England, probably by a Norseman, upon a stone near Gosforth Church in Cumberland. (63) It is connected with the words in Job xli. 1-2: 'Canst thou draw out Leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?'
Several old skalds had evidently a special fondness for this story about Thor, and in their treatment of it they laid particular emphasis on the terrible moment when the god fixes his flashing eyes on the serpent, which stares at him and spews out poison. This betrays connection with a mediæval idea that it was God who had the devil in the form of Leviathan, the sea-dragon, on His hook; and we are reminded of the description of Leviathan in Job xli. 9: 'Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out.'
Ulf Uggason (64) says that Thor struck the head of the Mithgarthsorm in the deep. This conception, which was not the usual one, is based on the words of the Old Testament: 'Thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters. Thou brakest the heads of Leviathan in pieces' (Psalm lxxiv. 13-14). Compare Isaiah xxvii. I: 'In that day the Lord, with his sore and great and strong sword, shall punish Leviathn the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.' To Thor has thus been ascribed the act of the Christian God.
Instead of the mystical bait, the mortal nature of Christ, the Scandinavians have a purely material, romantic bait; and the Norse poet who heard in the West the parable of God's catching the devil on a hook, and who shaped the myth of Thor's fishing expedition, introduced, therefore, from some other tale the feature that Thor twisted off the head of one of Hýmir's oxen and put its head on the hook as bait.
Of the stories from which several external features in the myth of Thor's fishing expedition are taken, one was probably an old Norwegian romantic tale still preserved among the Lapps. (65) Stories of Hercules also exerted, in my opinion, some influence on the myth under discussion.
In the Norse myth, the Mithgarthsorm appears along with Fenrir in the last struggle at the end of the world---a situation which is due to the influence of Rev. xvi. 13-14, where draco is mentioned along with bestia and pseudopropheta in the prediction that 'the kings of theearth and of the whole world' shall assemble 'to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.'
In the description of ragnarøkkr, we read how the Mithgarthsorm, amid the billows, 'turns itself about in giant-rage' (snýsk í jötunmóði, Vpá., 50). Then the sea rushes in violently over the earth (Snorri's Edda). This description agrees well with that of Leviathan in Job xli. 31-32: 'He maketh the deep to boil like a pot: he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment. He maketh a path to shine after him: one would think the deep to be hoary.'
Before bringing to an end this introduction to the English edition of my work, I wish to express my thanks to Whitley Stokes, Esq., who for a number of years has given me information of various kinds regarding the Irish language and literature. To my friend Dr. W. H. Schofield I am also grateful for the care and fidelity with which he has done the work of translation.
SOPHUS BUGGE.
Christiania, September 1898.
ENDNOTES:
59. See A. Chr. Bang, in (Norsk) Historisk Tidsskrift (2nd Series), III, 228. Back
60. Fornaldar Sögur, I, 373. Back
61. See Reinhold Köhler, Germania, XIII, 158 f; Brøndsted, (Norsk) Hist. Tidsskrift (2nd Series), III, 21-43; A. Chr. Bang, id., III, 222-232; E. H. Meyer, Völuspá, p. 146. Back
62. See Snorra Edda, ed. AM., I, 168-170; Hymiskviða, sts. 21-23. Back
63. This bit of sculpture is reproduced in Aarbøger f. nord. Oldk., 1884, p. 35. Back
64. Snorra Edda, I, 258. Back
65. See the story Jætten og Veslegutten (The Giant and the Little Boy), from Hammerfest, in Friis, Lappiske Eventyr og Folkesagn, p. 49 f. Back
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